Born in Glasgow on the 26th of April 1916 and educated at Glasgow Academy Ben Coutts, a son of the manse, not only had a very remarkable war but he was also a great Scottish character whose booming voice, gentle humour and warm charisma endeared him to everyone he met.

Determined to work outdoors Coutts began life as a pony boy a shepherd and a groom. He joined the Surrey and Sussex Yeomanry before the Second World War and, after defending areas of the South coast against the potential invasion, he sailed to North Africa with the Yeomanry in 1941as a Sergeant Major. His battery fought in the Sudan, Eritrea and Abyssinia. Thereafter he was commissioned in Cairo and sent to the garrison at Tobruk where he was severely injured when a stray piece of shrapnel hit him in the face taking away most of his nose. The hospital ship taking him to Alexandria was bombed by the Luftwaffe and after a year in hospital and ten plastic surgery operations he was sent home via the Cape. At Durban he was put aboard the Cunard liner Laconia crowded with 2,715 crew, women and children, military personnel, Italian prisoners and Polish guards.

200 miles off Ascension Island the Laconia was attacked by U-156. Almost 2000 perished in the shark ridden waters and after five days on rafts and overcrowded open boats the few remaining survivors were picked up by a Vichy French cruiser and sent to an internment camp in Casablanca. Some weeks later on his way to France the French ship that Coutts was in was rammed by a British Hunt class destroyer and Ben Coutts was returned to Britain. He was sent to East Grinstead and put into the care of the pioneering plastic surgeon Archie McIndoe who rebuilt his face and nose using bone taken from his hip.

Discharged from the army in 1944 Ben Coutts became an estate manager in Perthshire and was an expert on Beef Shorthorn, Aberdeen Angus and Highland Cattle. He was Secretary of the Aberdeen Angus Cattle Society, he travelled, wrote and broadcast extensively, he invariably wore the kilt and he always enjoyed a glass of Glenlivet. Ben Coutts died in December 2003 aged 87.

Ben Coutts, A Scotsman’s War, The Mercat Press, Edinburgh, 1995.